‘Er. I don’t know – I MEAN, I DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE HE IS,’ said Susan helplessly.
The helmeted woman leaned forward. There was something rather familiar about her.
‘Are you new?’
‘Yes. I mean, YES.’
‘Well, don’t stand there like a big girl’s blouse. Jolly well go and fetch him, there’s a good sport.’
Susan looked around wildly, and saw him at last. He wasn’t very far away. A youngish man, outlined in flickering pale blue, was visible among the fallen.
Susan hurried over, scythe at the ready. There was a blue line connecting the warrior to his former body.
SQUEAK! shouted the Death of Rats, jumping up and down and making suggestive motions.
‘Left hand thumb up, right hand bent at the wrist, give it some wellie!’ shouted the horned woman.
Susan swung the scythe. The line snapped.
‘What happened?’ said Volf. He looked down. ‘That’s me down there, isn’t it?’ he said. He turned slowly. ‘And down there. And over there. And . . .’
He looked at the horned female warrior and brightened up.
‘By Io!’ he said. ‘It’s true? Valkyries will carry me off to the hall of Blind lo where there is perpetual feasting and drinking?’
‘Don’t, I mean DON’T ASK ME,’ said Susan.
The Valkyrie reached down and hauled the warrior across her saddle.
‘Just keep quiet, there’s a good chap,’ she said.
She stared thoughtfully at Susan.
‘Are you a soprano?’ she said.
‘Pardon?’
‘Can you sing at all, gel? Only we could do with another soprano. Far too many mezzo-sopranos around these days.’
‘I’m not very musical, I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, well. Just a thought. Must be going.’ She threw back her head. The mighty breastplate heaved. ‘Hi-jo-to! Ho!’
The horse reared, and galloped into the sky. Before it reached the clouds it shrank to a gleaming pinpoint, which winked.
‘What,’ said Susan, ‘was all that about?’
There was a flurry of wings. The raven alighted on the head of the recently departed Volf.
‘Well, these guys believe that if you die in battle some big fat singing horned women carry you off to a sort of giant feast hall where you gobble yourself silly for the rest of eternity,’ said the raven. It belched genteelly. ‘Damn stupid idea, really.’
‘But it just happened!’
‘Still a daft idea.’ The raven looked around at the stricken battlefield, empty now except for the fallen and the flocks of his fellow ravens. ‘What a waste,’ he added. ‘ I mean, just look at it all. Such a terrible waste.’
‘Yes!’
‘I mean, I’m near bursting and there’s hundreds of ’em untouched. I think I’ll see if I can have a doggy bag.’
‘They’re dead bodies!’
‘Right!’
‘What are you eating?’
‘It’s all right,’ said the raven, backing away. ‘There’s enough for everyone.’
‘That’s disgusting!’
‘I didn’t kill ’em,’ it said.
Susan gave up.
‘She looked a lot like Iron Lily,’ she said, as they walked back to the patient horse. ‘Our gym mistress. Sounded like her, too.’ She imagined the warbling Valkyries pounding across the sky. Get some warrior, you bunch of fainting blossoms . . .
‘Convergent evolution,’ said the raven. ‘Often happens. I read once where apparently the common octopus has an eye almost exactly the same as the human eyeb- caw!’
‘You were going to say something like: except for the taste, weren’t you?’ said Susan.
‘Negger grossed by bind,’ said the raven indistinctly.
‘Sure?’
‘Leg go ogg by beak glease?’
Susan released her grip.
‘This is dreadful,’ she said. ‘This is what he used to do? There’s no element of choice?’
SQUEAK
‘But what if they don’t deserve to die?’
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats contrived to indicate, quite effectively, that in that case they could apply to the universe and point out that they didn’t deserve to die. In which case it was up to the universe to say, oh, didn’t you? oh, well, that’s all right, then, you can go on living. It was a remarkably succinct gesture.
‘So . . . my grandfather was Death, and he just let nature take its course? When he could have done some good? That’s stupid.’
The Death of Rats shook its skull.
‘I mean, was Volf on the right side?’ said Susan.
‘Hard to say,’ said the raven. ‘He was a Vasung. The other side were Bergunds. Apparently it all started with a Bergund carrying off a Vasung woman a few hundred years ago. Or it may have been the other way round. Well, the other side invaded their village. There was a bit of a massacre. And then the other ones went to the other village and there was another massacre. After that, you might say, there was some residual bad feeling.’
‘Very well, then,’ said Susan. ‘Who’s next?’
SQUEAK.
The Death of Rats landed on the saddle. It leaned down and, with some effort, hauled another hourglass out of the pack. Susan read the label.
It said: Imp y Celyn.
Susan had a sensation of falling backwards.
‘I know this name,’ she said.
SQUEAK.
‘I . . . remember it from somewhere,’ said Susan. ‘It’s important. He’s . . . important . . .’
The moon hung over the desert of Klatch like a huge ball of rock.
It wasn’t much of a desert to be graced by so impressive a moon.
It was just part of the belt of deserts, growing progressively hotter and drier, that surrounded the Great Nef and the Dehydrated Ocean. And no-one would have thought much about it if people very like Mr Clete of the Musicians’ Guild hadn’t come along and made maps and put across this part of the desert an innocent little dotted line that marked a border between Klatch and Hersheba.
Up until that time the D’regs, a collection of cheerfully warlike nomadic tribes, had roamed the desert quite freely. Now there was a line, they were sometimes Klatchian D’regs and sometimes Hershebian D’regs, with all the rights due to citizens of both states,
particularly the right to pay just as much tax as could be squeezed out of them and be drafted in to fight wars against people they’d never heard of. So as a result of the dotted line Klatch was now incipiently at war with Hersheba and the D’regs, Hersheba was at war with the D’regs and Klatch, and the D’regs were at war with everyone, including one another, and having considerable fun because the D’reg word for ‘stranger’ was the same as for ‘target’.
The fort was one of the legacies of the dotted line.
Now it was a dark rectangle on the hot silver sands. From it came what could very accurately be called the strains of an accordion, since someone seemed to want to play a tune but kept on running into difficulties after a few bars, and starting again.
Someone knocked on the door.
After a while there was a scraping on the other side and a small hatch opened.
‘Yes, offendi?’
IS THIS THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION?
The face of the little man on the other side of the door went blank.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ve got me there. Hang on a moment.’ The hatch shut. There was a whispered discussion on the other side of the door. The hatch opened.
‘Yes, it appears we are the . . . the . . . what was that again? Right, got it . . . the Klatchian Foreign Legion. Yes. What was it you were wanting?’
I WISH TO JOIN.
‘Join? Join what?’
THE KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION.
‘Where’s that?’
There was some more whispering.
‘Oh. Right. Sorry. Yes. That’s us.’
The doors swung open. The visitor strode in. A legionary with corporal’s stripes on his arm walked up to him.
‘You’ll have to report to . . .’ his eyes glazed a little, . . . you know . . . big man, three stripes . . . on the tip of my tongue a moment ago . . .’
SERGEANT?
‘Right,’ said the corporal, with relief. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’
ER . . .
‘You don’t have to say, actually. That’s what the . . . the…’
KLATCHIAN FOREIGN LEGION?
‘. . . what it’s all about. People join to . . . to . . . with your mind, you know, when you can’t . . . things that happened . . .’
FORGET?
‘Right. I’m . . .’ The man’s face went blank. ‘Wait a minute, would you?’
He looked down at his sleeve. ‘Corporal.. .’ he said. He hesitated, looking worried. Then an idea struck him and he pulled at the collar of his vest and twisted his neck until he could squint, with considerable difficulty, at the label thus revealed.
‘Corporal . . . Medium? Does that sound right?’
I DON’T THINK SO.
‘Corporal . . . Hand Wash Only?’
PROBABLY NOT.
‘Corporal . . . Cotton?’
IT’S A POSSIBILITY.
‘Right. Well, welcome to the . . . er . . .’